Amanda Trosten-Bloom, MSc

The Corporation for Positive Change
 West 5595 Pike Street
 Golden, CO 80403-1234

Phone: 303-279-2240
Email: Amanda@positivechange.com or amandacpc@earthlink.net
Web: http://www.positivechange.org/

Amanda Trosten-Bloom draws upon 25 years of organizational consulting and management experience in the areas of Organization Change and Human Resources Development. Since 1996, she has been engaged in long-term whole-system change using Appreciative Inquiry (AI) in a variety of business and social profit settings. Her work specifically focuses on the areas of culture transformation, strategic planning, leadership development, and business process improvement.

Using a variety of AI practices, Amanda aligns widely diverse groups of stakeholders around issues of strategic intent, action, and profitability. As such, she works with all levels of stakeholder — from executives, to middle managers, to staff and line employees, to customers, suppliers, and community members. Her clients have included: Accenture; Crittenden Health Systems; Green Mountain Coffee Roasters; Hunter Douglas; the Iliff School of Theology; McDATA Corporation; the National Security Agency (NSA); Providian Financial Services; SmithKline Beecham Clinical Laboratories; the United Religions Initiative; and the University of California at Berkeley Extension.

Since the late 1990s, Amanda has taught AI through The Taos Institute, OD Network, and other venues. She has co-authored The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change and the Encyclopedia of Positive Questions, and has co-produced a video/workbook entitled Positive Change @ Work. In addition, she has published articles in a variety of books and publications, including: “Creative AI Applications” (in Appreciative Inquiry and Organization Transformation), “The Liberation of Power: Exploring how Appreciative Inquiry ‘Powers Up the People,'” (translated into Danish in En symfoni af vaerdsaettelse. Udvikling og fornyelse i organizationer gennem arbejde med Appreciative Inquiry, 2001); and “Appreciative Inquiry: A Path to Positive Change,” (in Managing Change in Healthcare). One of her case studies appears in Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination, and she is a contributor to the Appreciative Inquiry Handbook: For Leaders of Change.

In the mid- to late-1980’s, Amanda worked in the fields of Human Resource Development and Administration in the health care industry. Her hands-on experience in these fields nurtured her capacity to work in high-stress, high-turnover industries and professions, as well as with labor unions. During this time, she taught Human Resources Management at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO. Prior to that, she worked at Hay Associates in Philadelphia, PA, where she helped to establish a Training and Organization Development consulting group within the larger firm.

Throughout her career, Amanda has actively engaged in professional development and mentoring activities that have furthered her profession and nurtured people’s capacities in the fields of organization development and change. She is a member of the Global Council of Trustees for Appreciative Inquiry Consulting, an international organization dedicated to lifting up Appreciative Inquiry as a tool for global social change. She is also a certified member of Associated Consultants International (ACI), and a career-long member of local and national OD networks.

Amanda is actively involved in applying the work of Appreciative Inquiry through pro bono projects related to education reform and peacemaking. She is co-coordinator of the Rocky Mountain URI (a local chapter of a global organization whose purpose is “to end religiously motivated violence, and create cultures of peace, justice, and healing”). She is also a member of The Interfaith Alliance (a national interfaith organization dedicated to faith-based social change and political action).

Amanda holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, and a Masters degree from Middlesex University through the Taos Institute Masters program in Relational Leading.